About Aimee Van Wagenen
Fellowship Report 2024: There is pleasure in the pathless woods
Summary
I traveled to England for 1 week in April, following Lord Byron to appreciate “the pleasure in the pathless woods,” engaging in close readings of his own rural landscape (in Nottinghamshire) and the urban landscape of his birthplace (London), while also interacting with work from “ecological artivists” in both cities who sought to provoke insights and environmental action. At home, I created my own ecological art pieces and designed a project-based learning unit for my students to do the same.
April 17-20 2024
I traveled to England for 1 week in April, following Lord Byron to appreciate “the pleasure in the pathless woods,” engaging in close readings of his own rural landscape (in Nottinghamshire) and the urban landscape of his birthplace (London), while also interacting with work from “ecological artivists” in both cities who sought to provoke insights and environmental action. At home, I created my own ecological art pieces and designed a project-based learning unit for my students to do the same.
April 13-April 16 2024
I explored the small city of Nottingham and its environs. I came seeking Byron, but his homeplace Newstead Abby, and I found instead Robin Hood everywhere I turned, and his later incarnation Ned Ludd, in this self-declared “city of rebels.” I visited several of Nottingham’s museums and galleries, and was very taken by Dora Budor’s eco-artivism exhibit Again at Nottingham Contemporary. I also spent a day in the expansive Sherwood Forest, and communed with some of its 1000 ancient oaks (each 400-1,000 years old!)
May - August 2024
I spent time art-making, reflecting on my time spent in England and continuing my close-reading practice of the natural landscape in Cape Cod. I designed a project-based learning unit for the upcoming school year incorporating insights.
Effects
In the short term, I was surprised! My explorations moved me in ways I did not at all expect. I hoped for, but did not really find a love and engagement with eco-artivism. It left me feeling cold and mostly dispirited. Inspiration for me came from being outdoors, communing with nature and especially trees. This shifted my thinking in designing a green project-based learning unit in 11th grade ELA. I had envisioned creating a unit where students make eco-artivism pieces and write artists' statements explaining their thinking – a really great idea! One thing I have learned as a teacher is you must do the project yourself and feel what it is like to take on the assignment. This fellowship afforded me that latitude, and what I learned really shifted my thinking on what will make a more engaging assignment. Instead of forcing students into the box of eco-artivism – an engagement with which left me feeling cold – I will instead have students design their own “experiment in living” (a la Thoreau) to bring them closer to their chosen environmental area and make a piece of creative work to express something meaningful about their closer relationship. I want to open up the possibilities for meaningful communion for students rather than force their communing into a particular format.
Questions
How have your knowledge, skills, and capabilities grown? I entered this fellowship with a spirit of curiosity and boundlessness in the directions that my learning might lead. I gained knowledge in incredibly disparate areas: I learned what a small city with a government focused on carbon neutrality looks and feels like (there is a great deal of well-planned, efficiently run, electric public transportation and an ease in walking and biking to get around); I know much more about ancient oaks, healthy forests, and the legend of Robin Hood; I learned a critique of “pastoral power,” from Dora Budor, and gained new language to push back on the ways in which government and public-private partnerships management of natural spaces constrain our ways of being in nature; I learned again that trees move me and speak to me and inspire me; and, I am more capable and comfortable communing in nature and being open to the creative places that it takes me. There is much more too.
As a result, in what ways will your instructional (or other) practice change? I plan to create more opportunities for open-ended explorations for students. I want students to find what moves them in the green space – for me, it is trees. What is it for each of them? I startled myself with some of my insights from this fellowship, and I want my students to experience this too. I plan to create more small and large moments of learning in the environmental space (new to me to focus on this especially in ELA class) that do not have predefined paths. As Byron taught me: “There is pleasure in the pathless woods.”
What is the greatest personal accomplishment of your fellowship? I am really proud of the art piece I created called “Major Oak 2024.” It encapsulates many of the insights I gathered from this fellowship. There are the pieces I’ve already mentioned above: my love of trees, my appreciation for the ancient oaks, and the creative work that comes from communing in nature. And also, this work for me is a commentary on the role that humans have played for centuries in relationship to the natural world. The 1,000 year old Major Oak has survived with and in spite of human interventions. It remains standing here for so long because Sherwood Forest was once protected royal hunting grounds; government management of public space constrained the forest’s use and this management has transformed over centuries as a now protected National Forest. The Major Oak has been threatened by human interaction, and as the mythic resting spot for Robin Hood and his Merry Men, has been a tourist attraction since Victorian times. Visitors' feet damaged the soil and the Oak’s branches, but new human interventions (fencing, fiberglass fill) have reclaimed space for this tree. Dozens of its branches are literally held up by human created props. I highlighted these props in pink in this art piece, calling them out and bringing them forward into view. This piece is meant to spark thinking about what it means to be a human in interaction with the forest, and to upend the notion that there ever was or will be such a thing as “unspoiled nature.”
How will your experience positively impact student learning in new ways? In addition to incorporating a new green unit into my 11th grade English class, I have worked with my 11th grade team to devise a plan to bring a year of green service into our 11th grade advisory. We will have our students pick an environmental area and to work with students and teachers in this same area on service opportunities during advisory, on field trips, and hopefully also on students’ own time in the evening, on weekends, and/or in the summer. My own gravitation to trees during this fellowship sparked the idea for me to open up this space for connection to a specific environmental area for our students.
What are your plans to work collaboratively with colleagues? I have already begun collaborating on the 11th grade year of service plans, working with our Director of Green Programming and our 11th grade team, and hopefully with a newly hired Harvard Ed Portal intern to design service opportunities and field trips, and to incorporate reflection on green community service into our existing Junior Review portfolio and presentation.
Are there issues or challenges in your school, community or the world that you feel better prepared to address with your students? One of the challenges in our school community is our community service requirement: 40 documented hours outside of school for each student by the end of senior year. For a significant minority of students, the end of senior year is a scramble to collect hours anywhere they can, with no space for meaningful engagement or reflection on the pleasures and importance of service to a well-lived life. For the vast majority of students, there is no connection between the community service requirement and our school’s green mission. I feel prepared to talk about my own experiences intentionally communing with nature and to give examples of the ways in which humans can and have positively and proactively protected natural spaces with interventions. I am excited to get students interested in learning about and taking action to positively impact natural spaces.
How would you describe to a friend the most fundamental ways in which your fellowship has changed your personal and/or professional perspective? This particular fellowship has shifted my perspective away from the merely critical, towards openness, optimism and generativity. We are not going to achieve climate justice with a critical stance (alone). Yes, we humans have done and will continue to do damage. And, we must also intervene positively. We have to get unstuck from the paralysis that comes from the scale of the challenge before us. We need to do things, and to do them with hope and creativity.